Okay, I’ve got a story. It’s a sort of scary one. I think independent/self-publishing authors need to know about it, and telling it carefully and correctly is also important for my own situation, so I’m going to take my time and lay it all out in order.

On Friday, February 27, 2015, I noticed that my bookmarked Amazon.com link to my first novel,
Nolander
, was yielding, “We’re sorry. The Web address you entered is not a functioning page on our site.” I went to my Amazon dashboard and discovered the book had been blocked.

In my spam folder, I discovered an email from Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), Amazon’s self-publishing arm, informing me that someone had sent in a DMCA notice. In response, Amazon had summarily blocked Nolander from sale.

Welcome to Thea Reads Thursdays. The last 3 weeks was all about Kat from Theta Waves, but since the novella has gone live, I figure you’d rather grab it in its entirety than read it week by week.

The story as a whole is only .99cents on Amazon and between 99cents and $1.50 in all the other spots. (Kobo, BN, GP, iTunes)

For now, vampire addicts are in luck! I’m live writing along with a few other writers and posting bits here on my blog of

Vampire Addictions Book 2: Installment 1

Remember, it’s raw and first draft…so grammar and spelling may be wonky. Did you miss Vampire Addictions 1? Start with the first FREE bite of Vampire Addictions is available from Amazon, Kobo, GP, iTunes, BN.

There are things in this life that are mysteries to me. Some folks wonder how the Nazca lines were made, whether Atlantis existed, or where exactly Cleopatra’s body ended up after she danced with the asp. I just find myself wondering why an ancient vampire has me scouting out libraries in the dustiest parts of the city. I mean, what kind of sicko has a taste for plain old librarian blood when he can afford the exotic blends of willing circus performers or burlesque acts? Why not go for a rock star, or a candy bar heiress, or a famous actress. Surely any one of them would be more than willing to end the sham of life they’re enduring, having done everything and everyone already that even remotely smacked of intriguing. Maybe some of them even owe humanity that little favour.

Mine wasn’t to question though; it was merely to do my duty. And I supposed it was a good thing anyway that the client wanted something I might actually be able to achieve because as it turned out, I was terrible at my new job. Over the last weeks I’d been employed it had become horrifically clear I’d been given this task because of my truly shitty recruiter skills, and a librarian might actually be a recruit that was within my grasp.

When I’d taken the job, I’d thought I’d wanted to punish the ghost that had taken over my body, brought back from the other side because a voodoo priestess missed her lover and I’d been desperate enough to go to her for help because I’d been enthralled by the original vampire. It was a mess, all that, with so many I gotcher noses I couldn’t see straight for peering at the end all the time. I’d finally managed to confront the priestess with Magnus at my side, and no one, absolutely no one dared refuse that Viking-esque vampire. Aisha the Haitian voodoo queen separated me from the parasite that was her lover but lost her own body in the process. Another grisley mess, if you ask me, but I wasn’t about to come between two lesbians and their lovers’ spat even if I had come to like Aisha. The woman that remained in her body looked like the voodoo queen but behaved as Isme the sociopathic ghost.

I’m still bitter about it, but a woman moves on, even if said sociopath had the gall to infer that the dead weren’t far from done with me. Well, Hell, yeah, sister. I was banging a hot vampire, wasn’t I? The monster inside came about four times a week, thank you very much.

At any rate, because I’d lost my job at the vet’s office due to a helluva lot of paranormal interference, I was in dire need of coin. If I didn’t bag me a recruit, I could kiss my apartment, along with sustenance and lacy panties, goodbye. I liked my panties, and I was rather fond of sleeping indoors.

The client I was recruiting for had been very specific. It had to be woman. It had to be a librarian. And it had to be someone who adored Egyptian culture.

I’d been watching this current chick for the last two weeks after spending far too many hours in the dankest of must-ridden book depositories in the city. This one seemed to have all the earmarks of the recruit I was searching for.

It was a plus for me that the woman also turned out to be a lesbian because it offered me a new hustling angle that I hadn’t considered before. Folks told me I was attractive. Magnus couldn’t keep his teeth off

“So what do you think?” I said to her from my side of the counter, fingering the seam of pages facing me. “I’ve got the keys to my boss’s manse.”

She eyed me something I’d call lechery if she’d have managed to deliver it right. As it was, she just looked cross-eyed. I had to repress the shudder. She wasn’t exactly attractive. Butchy, if a gal liked butchy, but I didn’t like gals that way so her harsh-angled jaw was making it harder for me to lay the stank of charm on her.

“Well?” I let my fingers trail to her wrist.

“The stacks,” she said. “I’ve always wanted to do it the history section.”

—-****—-

WANT MORE: come back next Thursday

You can also Sign up for new release info and get notified as soon as Vampire Addictions 2 launches. Or: Subscribe to my ARC team and get reads for FREE! Just agree to review in exchange for copies before launch date. visit Thea’s website for more info and signups.

Other writers are live writing and making good reads available on their blogs. Check out the hashtag #kboardfriends on Twitter for more awesome tales.

It’s just about release time, so I imagine by the time you see this, the novella will be ready for consumption in its entirety, but for those who still want a bit more before committing, we left Kat in a back alley. Will Kat disappoint her little frog? Read on!

If you haven’t read any of the Theta Waves series, go ahead and grab a copy of the opening novella for FREE:

Don’t miss a chance to get my new releases before anyone else, and for FREE! Agree to review in exchange for copies before launch date. visit Thea’s website for more info and signups.

Kat’s Cradle: installment 3

Remember, it’s raw and first draft…so grammar and spelling may be wonky

She stepped from the alley, pulling her hood over her hair. She wished she had her motorcycle; her legs trembled, making it difficult to walk over the heaved up asphalt. Her breath was coming in short gasps from the effort of putting one foot in front of the other. Even her heart labored to keep a consistent rhythm and each flutter she felt in her chest reminded her that she was now a patheticly weak.

Thankfully, the cloak of midnight would disguise her infamously well known face. Should the disguise fail, her nine millimeter pistol would succeed. Twelve blocks of walking already, and several hours, give or take the miserable sweating of the last two in the back alley, she should be only a few blocks away from the Center.

It was a dead easy plan on paper, but a hellish one in practice. She wasn’t even sure she could trust the information she’d tortured out of the physicist in the few hours before the frog had battered her insides.

“A gal never burns her bridges, though,” she mumbled to a man that pushed past her, making her stumble against a building. She caught herself before her legs gave out.

He swung round on his heel to give her a threatening look. “What was that, bitch?”

“I said a girl never burns her bridges.”

He shoved his hands in his pockets. “Crazy bitch.” He shook his head and made to move off.

Pushing against the blocks with her palms seemed to put some steel back into her shins, some spit in her spirit.

“Crazy would be burning my bridges,” she said to him.

He paused. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

She reached beneath her jacket. “Just trying to explain that if I had killed her, then what would the consequences for her be if she gave me bad information?” She pointed the pistol in his direction. “So the bridge is still there if I need to cross back over and beat the black shit out of her till she oozes good intell.”

His hands came out of his pockets when he saw the gun and went into the air.

“Listen, lady,” he said. “I’ve got no beef with you. I’m sorry I called you a bitch. I’m sorry I pushed you.”

She shrugged. “I am a bitch,” she said. “And I got no problem with a little physical aggression.”

She watched the muzzle of her pistol shaking in the near dark. She was obviously much weaker than she thought. The frog’s abandonment had taken too much out of her if she couldn’t even hold her own pistol straight.

He started to back away, subtly enough that he was barely moving. “You don’t have to do this,” he said.

She shrugged. “You’re a bridge I can afford to burn,” she said. “You might even say you’re a necessary bridge to burn.”

She squeezed the trigger.

Dammit all if it didn’t sound any louder than a click. And the fool didn’t even have the grace to collapse from contact. He did wet himself though. There was a suspiciously black pool at his feet that made her think of the last few hours she’d spent in the alley. His face softened with relief. He’d obviously thought the misfire was an incredible stroke of good luck.

“You think you’re lucky, issat it?” she said, shaking her head. “Man. This is so not your lucky night.”

Even in the dim light of the streetlamp, she could see the confusion creep over his expression. She advanced on him, willing her shaking legs forward.

“Now I’m just going to have to beat you to death.”

She marshaled enough energy to throw herself in his direction. She remembered the puddle at his feet, the puddle she’d left on the filthy pavement, and she let go on him. She stuck her fingers into his mouth first, tearing at his jaw so that he couldn’t plead with her, then she used her purchase on his teeth to slam his head against the pave.

It took several seconds before she heard the distinctive crack. Normally she would have reveled in it; instead bile rose up into her throat. She leaned across his torso and heaved up her stomach until she collapsed on him in a shuddering pile of gelatin. She waited for the quivering to abate with frustrated resignation, and when she thought she could move without her belly twisting into a gnarled fist, she inhaled a lungful of sour air.

“You’re better off, anyway,” she muttered as she pushed herself upright. “You don’t know what’s coming. If you knew you’d have begged me to kill you.” She ran her palm down his face, closing the eyelids. “You can thank me when we meet in Hell.”

—-****—-

WANT MORE:

Sign up for new release info and get notified as soon as Kat’s Cradle launches. Or: Subscribe to my ARC team and get reads for FREE! Just agree to review in exchange for copies before launch date. visit Thea’s website for more info and signups.

Don’t miss a chance to get my new releases before anyone else, and for FREE! Agree to review in exchange for copies before launch date. visit Thea’s website for more info and signups.

Kat’s Cradle: installment 2

Remember, it’s raw and first draft…so grammar and spelling may be wonky

It had been two months since she’d stumbled from The Beast’s bunker, burned to a crisp, stinking of blood and sweat and the sickly feminine stink of the spitter bitch.

Kat had nearly given up then. Everything she’d worked for, known, believed had turned to ash as she lay on the cot, recovering from the burns she’d suffered at Theda’s hands. Well, Theda and the man she called Cain. The immortal and original Cain. Imagine it: the son of Adam, the god’s own fleshly grandson doing battle with the likes of a nobody raised to warrior status because the god had abandoned them all and left them in the hands of The Beast. It was deliciously ironic in an Alanis Morrisette kind of way.

He’d been cunning, that Cain, but she’d given back as good as she got, damn him. She hoped he was suffering still from the burns, the little prick. He deserved to agonize like she had: left alone by her hero to rot in a cell, torn between praying the pain would return because it would mean her nerve endings had regenerated, and hoping to never feel the agony of the searing sensation of having nerves ever again.

And then the ultimate humiliation of having her enemy thrust upon her in that cell, making her equal as though a spindly godspit addict was a match for the Red General. Any punishment would have been better than that shame.

Such glorious hate like that was as infectious as a chimera virus, multi-headed and triply deadly. But when antibodies squirm their way into a host like that, the virus must adapt or die. Lucky for the spitter bitch, it adapted in Kat.

Had it been two months already? Two months and a mere dozen murdered soldiers to show for her trouble. She was losing her touch, but she figured she could blame that on her unexpected hormone shifts and the horrible fatigue that also somehow made every muscle feel tender and swollen. Even so, time was running short. Kat had seen the images on the Promo that Theda and Ezekiel had blasted to the world after Ezekiel had nearly severed The Beast’s head. It was a mangled and grisly mess that, but she knew John wouldn’t stay that way.

The fools had him in some sort of isolation chamber, high on godspit if she recognized the signs, and while it would keep John down for a while, he’d regenerate soon enough. Was, in fact, regenerating at a decent speed, Kat knew, because the flimsy, second rate protection he’d offered her as his favored assassin had helped her heal after all the harm she’d endured in his cells. She’d healed to near perfection by the time Ezekiel had taken John’s head, and then that power abandoned her. Like John had abandoned her. So he was either dead or he was aware enough to retract her protection. Her money was on aware and brooding like a fucking sulky child.

What she did now, she had to do on her own, carefully and cunningly, because without John’s seal of protection she could actually die. Unlike John. Unlike Ezekiel and Theda. They were all true fallen, just like the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse were. Marked by the god as protected until their duties were done and could return to their paradise if she understood things right. And now that the little spitter bitch had enlightened all those Horsemen with her psychic visionary hooey, they all had a new found reason to be good instead of evil.

Kat eased her eyes closed, letting go a resigned sigh. Paradise. She couldn’t even imagine what that might be. All her life had been nothing but hell pure and simple. When she’d first met John, she believed him to be her guardian angel. And later, when he bid her do truly evil things to people for his own purposes, she’d done them simply because she wanted to please him. She owed him. She’d have been dead or worse if he hadn’t entered her life. Later, when she’d admitted her beliefs to Theda, and learned the truth: that he had truly been an angel at his creation, it didn’t matter what he was. It never mattered.

It didn’t matter until he’d abandoned her.

So her god had been a false one, her duties as misguided as her deeds. No hope of paradise for her. Just death and nothingness, if she was lucky; death and eternal suffering if she wasn’t. Even so, if she couldn’t find redemption for her evil ways, she could at least make sure her anti-god suffered as much as she did. That was what she owed him now, and she would pay him back in spades. Even if it took every last shred of her blackened soul to do it. She just had to leave this filthy alley and do it. Just take the steps away from the bloody mess she’d left within and move on. She took a deep breath, bracing herself as though she was about to plunge into frigid water.

“Maybe we’ll meet again, frog,” she said over her shoulder. “When your mama isn’t such a fucking loser.”

—-****—-

WANT MORE:

Sign up for new release info and get notified as soon as Kat’s Cradle launches. Or: Subscribe to my ARC team and get reads for FREE! Just agree to review in exchange for copies before launch date. visit Thea’s website for more info and signups.

Don’t miss a chance to get my new releases before anyone else, and for FREE! Agree to review in exchange for copies before launch date. visit Thea’s website for more info and signups.

Kat’s Cradle: installment 1

Remember, it’s raw and first draft…so grammar and spelling may be wonky

The flare spewed crimson into the midnight sky, losing brilliance in the light pollution of the Western part of the supercity. Even these months after the god had come and gone, leaving a war-torn Earth ravaged by battle, the West still had decent enough energy to reveal how bedraggled the buildings had become with a population who cared about nothing but self-gratification. Kat watched the semen-trail of light as she sat propped against the cold stone of an alleyway wall. How fitting that the flare be blood red and not orange, and how wickedly fucking suiting that the better parts of the devastated city steal the light from her single shot. The western half of the city always got the best anyway, leaving the dregs to squabble over the rest, why should a mere apocalypse change anything. The more things changed; the more they stayed the same it seemed.

She hadn’t planned to shoot a flare off here in the shitty, God-forsaken affluence of New Earth; it was simply the place her baby had decided to die, and so she marked it, thinking it a fairly monumental occasion for an HIV infected assassin. Here, swimming in enough blood to make Kat seriously afraid for the first time since she’d been a newly bleeding virgin about to give it up to a swarthy john her father had brought home. Cocooned in the smells of coffee and toasted bread and expensive perfumes, her tiny package had opted to squirm from its tethers deep in the lining of its home and float in the blood originally harbored to nourish its new flesh. Decided to screw itself prematurely free between her legs and leak onto the blackened pave of a back alley.

If she understood poetry at all, Kat would call it justice.

As it was it just hurt like a bitch. More than the pain of the beating she’d taken by The Beast’s horsemen, of burning nearly to death in that cell He’d put her in as punishment for disobedience. It hurt more than taking half a dozen gunshots in the back as she sprayed His men with fire so the little spitter bitch, theda, could save herself from martyrdom. So that together with the Pale Rider, the two of them could try to save the dregs of humankind from boiling in a soupy mess of fire and brimstone. Fools; both of them.

The miscarriage hurt, sure, but she’d live. For long enough, at least. Kat chuckled to herself as she stared at the flare’s reflection in the pool of viscous fluid that collected on the asphalt between her legs.

“Couldn’t stand the though of me being your mama, issat it?” she said to the puddle. “No worries. I don’t blame you little frog.”

Kat pushed herself to a squat and pulled at her pants, hiking them up over her bloody thighs without bothering to clean the mess.

“Better you don’t see what I’m going to do anyway.”

She didn’t exactly think she’d stay alive long enough to worry about hygiene at this point. What was a little blood to a former general of The Beast’s army? She’d bathed in plenty during her tenure, took pleasure in the bloodletting and carnage because she was good at it. It was a strange thing to take pride in, but she had done so.

She stared down, waiting for the last of the light to drown in the depths of the tarry pool. Only when it had gone fully black did she turn on booted heel and stagger to the mouth of the alley. She almost looked back over her shoulder, and but for the little squirrel in her chest that threatened to send into the weakness of a bawling fit, she would have. But a general, former or not, did not bawl.

She had things to do. Things that she couldn’t count on the Pale Rider and his little spitter lover, Theda, to take care of. They had their paltry little jobs to do, and Kat had hers, self-imposed though it may be. She just had to find the strength to begin again.

—-****—-

WANT MORE:

Sign up for new release info and get notified as soon as Kat’s Cradle launches. Or: Subscribe to my ARC team and get reads for FREE! Just agree to review in exchange for copies before launch date. visit Thea’s website for more info and signups.

Vampire Addictions will be on sale from 5.99 to .99cents on Tuesday, Jan 13, 2015

I know vamps aren’t overly hot right now. I know werewolves and shifters and billioniares are all the reading rage, but I still love me a good vampire story. In fact, I just finished the Cameo series (actually the Trilogy of Shadows series) by Dawn McCullough-White and really enjoyed it. It’s a very unique addition to the lore, and I recommend the story to lovers of vampire fiction. (It’s free on amazon.com btw)

A couple of months earlier, I finished Silver Cross by Debra L. Martin and David Small: another great addition (although this time with a romantic bent), and one I would recommend for a steal at 2.99.

Both had a kickass heroines, and who doesn’t love kickass heroines?

I think the return of Lestat’s character created by Anne Rice (my ultimate favorite vampire writer…heck, anything Rice is good by me) shows that we do still love vampires. I just can’t put my finger on why I love em so much. I read cheesey, awesome, scary, and romantic vamp fiction with much the same zeal.

Of course my durn muse is a slow learner. Despite my belief that all things vamp was a slow burn to ash kind of investment, I ended up starting a new series. A vampire series. A doggone vampire romance series at that.

sigh.

It’s not Stephanie Mayer, and it’s definitely not Anne Rice, but it does have some zing to it. the folks who have read it seem to enjoy it.

So, I stuffed the three volumes of novellas into one book and put it on sale to see how readers respond. I decided that if readers enjoyed the story, I’d continue writing the series to the full 3 books. If not, then at least book 1 has a suitable ending…I hope.

So we’ll see what the year brings. You can let me know if you want more when you sign on to my new releases newsletter. Just put more Magnus in the comments.

What do you think? Do you enjoy vamp stories as much as me? What keeps you returning to the genre?

Taste a new vamp fiction series

Sassy Jade Sanchez has just been dumped after four years of devout monogamy, and she’s starving for a little affection. Her self-esteem is shattered, her confidence damaged, and she’s had so many ugly cries she’s afraid her face will never be the same. Enter hot as hell Sam, who asks her to an upscale costume party. It sounds like just the ticket to squeeze the last bit of melancholy from her system. Hell, if she’s lucky, smoking hot Sam might make a move on her.

Three drinks in, and Sam abandons her to a greasy Dracula who seems bent on getting her into some sort of S&M action that involves teeth and necks and declarations that her vulnerability tastes like Chianti. She’d knee the guy in the groin except her feet have taken root to the tiles. It takes the handsome and enigmatic host to extract her from the costumed nosferatu, but it’s an ironic rescue at best.

She’s been recruited, and vampire bait ain’t nothing if it isn’t fresh.

~~~**********~~~

A little taste from the opening:

I’ve always told myself a good old-fashioned cry is as good to the psyche as grease is to machinery, but after four days of slicking my spirit with that particular lubricant, I wasn’t feeling the relief. In fact, I was beginning to worry my face would forget how to make any other expression except ugly cry. Four days. A full day for each year I’d devoted to the bastard who had fooled me into thinking monogamy could be as good for the soul as confession. Of course, I’d believed he thought the practice just as spiritual as I did. Of course, I was the sole devout practitioner. Of course, I was an idiot not to see the signs.

I needed a good exorcism, that was what. Rid myself of the demons of grief and regret. Get the hell out there and just rile things up. Get my party on. Get my drink on. Get my what the hell am I going to do without that bastard blubbering on.

I settled for a mocha swirl latté because who was I kidding? My complexion looked like someone had scoured it with acid. My eyes could barely peer through the swollen sausages that used to be my lids. No way I could find any sort of Jade juju with my face looking like a raw turkey’s ass. I’d need at least a week to recover, and all I had was the weekend. Halloween weekend at that. I’d taken three sick days from the vet’s clinic where I worked the desk and I knew by the tone of the vet’s voice that if I didn’t show on Monday, my ass would never get the luxury of imagining such a wondrous thing as a turkey ever again. Like it or not, it was back to the land of the norms who hadn’t had their hearts ripped out by a cheating bastard. Or at least, back to the land where those who had, have at least managed to move on.

So coffee and sugar would have to do.

Which is how I met the hot-as-hell Sam.

Which is how I managed for the first time in four days to find a tattered edge of my self esteem’s cloak close enough that I could steal a tentative grip on it.

Which is how I ended up on a rampage of apocalyptic proportions trying to find a costume at four o’clock Saturday afternoon for a party that started at nine.

“This is it? Really?” I said to the rental clerk, a gorgeous mulatto chick at least three years older who obviously never had a man pull on the string of her self-esteem. “This is all you have?”

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HOLY HELL! THE END IS NEAR!

Both of the last episodes (8&9) are now live on all outlets. AND at a really nice launch price of 99cents. That’s right! get em both for 99cents each and finish the series in one blow. It’s back to regular price of 2.99 by July 24, 2014

They feel too much like high school book reports for me, and I always did really badly on those. However, when I started self-publishing my own novels, I began to realize how important those reviews could be for an author. I started to tell myself that I would just support independent publishers by purchasing their works and sharing their information with friends when I could.

And I have been. Almost exclusively these last two years, I’ve been reading independent authors (well, except for George RR Martin. I went through those books as if they were free)

During this time, I have found some new favorite authors, and one of them has just recently released her second book in a planned three book series. I’d like to share with you my thoughts on that because it was a very satisfying read and made me applaud how clean independent fiction could be. (something many authors struggle with, because even when we purchase editing, it takes a while before we can find the right editor for our work.)

Witch’s Curse by Debra Martin and David Small is the second in the Witch Stone Prophecy trilogy and as a sweeping saga in the world of magic and assassins, it promised me some of my favorite things. Witches, of course, but also female assassins and characters that begin their journeys as flawed beings who ultimately find some sort of redemption.

The story takes the reader through twists and turns worthy of epic fantasy while managing to keep the reins of tension taut and the characters true. We get to see through the eyes of evil-doers and heroes alike, and that feature brought a freshness to the plot that I enjoyed. Even minor characters became favorites. The authors grabbed my attention with all the keywords that make me take notice of a piece of fiction, and the writing kept me reading. I look forward to the finale.

If you’re looking for book 1, you can find it here: Do yourself a favour, and grab both of these. You won’t be disappointed.